Curtains opening

[Erik van Schaaik]

Hi,

 

I'm working on a theatre set. The red curtains open.

The curtains are animated using cloth simulation in A:M 13.

I almost got it nailed, but not entirely. So much parameters, I'm tweaking my ass off. Each time I have to tweak, simulate, tweak, simulate...

 

Is there anybody who knows how to make these curtains move like the real thing?

 

I'll post my curtain-project. It has the animated curtain. Just run the cloth simulation in the chor and see how far I got it. Never mind the missing decals.

 

Please help me make this work. Thanks!

Curtain2.prj

[John Bigboote]

I took a different approach to this task once...

 

I modeled the curtain... a repetitive 'S' form...like a curtain... then I applied bones vertically, one for each 'pleat' in the curtain. I then animated them opening and closing in an action and applied dynamic constraints to give them life. A cheat.

[Erik van Schaaik]

Thanks! I'm planning on doing just that if cloth turns out to be impossible. However, I allways found ways to go around cloth simulation. This time I want to actually use it for once. I'm sure the right settings can be made, can't they..?

[thefreshestever]

i downloaded the file and played around with it a bit... you get a bit better result if you select lower values for the stiffness-parameters,maybe a bit more air-drag... but the thing that bothered me (and i couldn´t figure out how to solve that problem) was that the curtain always looked a bit too stiff at the bottom, the bow is in the wrong direction, the tips at the bottom would have to have a delay, the top has to move first and then the tips... maybe you can ad a second non-clothed-hand-animated area in the middle of the curtain to get that delay... but then you can animate all by hand i guess...

[HomeSlice]

Also, you can often get better results on any type of Cloth Sim by animating the cloth at half the speed you want. Or, if it's already animated, make the action or chor action twice as long as it is supposed to be. The run the cloth sim. Then delete every other keyframe from the sim. Then shrink the action or chor action back down to its proper length.

[Erik van Schaaik]

Thanks a lot all, for thinking with me. I think I will have to animate the curtain by hand though. I'll give that a try and see if that has better results sooner.

[Erik van Schaaik]

I'm going for dynamic bones. That seems to work just fine. Much easier to tweak.

Stiffness 2%, drag 50%. A lot of bones, yes, but no problem for A:M.

[John Bigboote]

GOOD! I remembered where I had used the curtain like that...it was in my 'bikini strummer' HA:MR sample I had made...though for some reason no-one ever noticed the curtain...